


Beckoning On Silver Thread

by blipblorpsnork



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Angst, Dying relationships, Emotinal Abuse, Fluff, Growing Relationships, M/M, Mental Abuse, Multi, Self Harm, Unrequited Love, lovers that have passed on, this is how do you say;;;;; a rollercoaster of emotions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-17
Updated: 2019-07-17
Packaged: 2020-06-30 02:50:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19844023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blipblorpsnork/pseuds/blipblorpsnork
Summary: Jounouchi had always been there for Yugi from the very start. Through thick and thin, he stood by the young duelist's side. When the time came and Atem passed on, he was ever more vigilant, standing guard against all the horrors of the world. But it was grueling and excruciating, and in the end, some might even argue it had never been worth it at all. But for Jounouchi, all he cared about was Yugi's happiness, whether he factored into that or not.





	Beckoning On Silver Thread

Jounouchi had always been there for Yugi. From the very start of their friendship, rocky high school days notwithstanding, he had been a shoulder to cry on and an ear to lend. He had been Yugi’s support during their innumerable ordeals, trials, and tribulations; a pillar upholding the castle fortifications through every misstep, through every problem they had encountered as a group or as individuals. He had been there during the hardships and the glories, through tears and pain and wisdom and simple suffering. He had been through ups and downs, holding the small King of Game’s hand and rubbing his shoulders, all the soft affections of the gentlest and most innocent love. He’d been the shouting voice to snap him to his senses, or the winning smile of silent encouragement. He had always been there for him, through the good and the bad.

There had been nights after the Pharaoh passed on that Yugi woke up screaming, tears pouring down his cheeks. He was always inconsolable on those nights, near hysterics or despondent in turns. It had become so bad that eventually Jounouchi was called over every night it happened by a worried and sobbing or understandably distraught and uncertain Mama Motou or Grandpa Mutou. And every night Jounouchi got one of those calls he came over and did everything within his power to soothe the blinding agony attempting to consume his soul in a way he had never trained to fight against no matter what that meant for him. He came through sleep loss and threats from his father, walking the dangerous distance from his apartment hidden in the slums of Domino to the game shop in the heart of the city where the streets were busy, even at night.

Eventually those nights became fewer and further between. Eventually, Yugi was able to stand on his own both spiritually and mentally. He stopped having to ask Jounouchi to order for him when they went out to eat or to the movies. He was able to walk up to people and initiate conversation again. He was able to take a nap or sleep for the night without needing a hand to hold or he would wake up in a freezing sweat sick to his churning stomach. And Jounouchi was so happy and so proud and so relieved to see that time did in fact heal all wounds. Even wounds left behind by a soulmate passing into whatever lay beyond.

But it had only been the beginning, and they realized themselves fools for thinking it had been the end of a tremulous fight.

The descent had been long and hard, a sudden drop into a chasm of loneliness pitted with suicidal ideation and something near self harm. The ascent was an uphill battle, but he managed it in time. And Yugi blossomed so fully and completely once he hit the precipice and climbed further still than what had been his previous plateau—in dueling, in his social life, in his career, in everything important to him—that the blonde couldn’t help but realize how deeply and hopelessly in love he was.

He loved Yugi. It was funny, that; how he hadn’t noticed until after he was certain he wouldn’t lose him was beyond him. A “don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone” sort of situation, but it never got as far as gone, for which he was immensely thankful. It came close, but in ways he hadn’t really expected. Yugi had been delicate in high school; delicate enough that there was always a worry, once he was aware of the fact that it even existed, that maybe he self-harmed, or worse. And back then he hadn’t, which had been its own relief. But after Atem the risk and worry rose once again.

But physical self harm had been one of the lesser of the worries, to the blonde’s surprise and dismay. He’d tried. Attempted. Started. And Jounouchi had reeled him back from the brink and talked him down like any good friend would do. Like any good person really. Like anyone in love with him. And in the end Yugi had even allowed his friend to do a body search, one in which he found no marks outside of past scars from their many adventures and misadventures and dangerous exploits and he thanked the Gods he didn’t fully believe in for letting his best friend go unharmed by his own hand.

Or so he had begun to let himself think. The safety had only been physical.

Mentally things had become terrible for the duelist. As the nightmares began to recede a horrible new manifestation of self harm had come to light instead. Yugi became volatile, agitated and easy to snap, blowing up over the smallest things and going so far as to yell at Grandpa Mutou and Mama Mutou over what in the past wouldn’t have even registered as inconveniences. And in some ways it was long overdue; he’d never had a nasty rebellious stage as a growing teen. But for it to come so forcefully and so intensely at 18-going-on-19 had been a veritable slap in the face to everyone involved.

He pushed his friends away as much as he pushed his family away, if not more; family was socially expected to stick with you through the worst of things, after all. Friends were under less of an obligated and would not have been stigmatized if they decided they needed to leave for their own safety and health. And it was a cruel shock to everyone, especially his friends. Yugi, who so many times in the past had gone to his companions for assurance and comfort, who had always relied on them to be okay, was doing everything in his power to make sure they wanted nothing to do with him. And even when everyone could tell it was a terrified self-defense mechanism, he nearly succeeded in ostracizing himself from every social circle he’d ever been in. To the present, Otogi wouldn’t speak to him outside of business. Anzu had been hurt so much that every smile she shared with him held the slightest hint of sadness now and never really lasted. Bakura hadn’t been seen hide nor hair of since the debacle had started to unfold and Yugi had told him off, rudely and viciously, for not bringing his Ring’s spirit under control sooner. And Jounouchi…

Jounouchi ended up hurt the most by it all. In some ways he had it easier; love numbed him to some of the hardships and some of the pain. But the other side of that coin was that other things that didn’t hurt the others as much hurt him far worse. And in many ways, he got the brunt of it; he was around Yugi the most often and because of that felt the worst of the backlash, got the worst of the screaming matches, ended up in fights that almost turned physical. It was something akin to torture, realizing that he was in love with the same man who made him want to curl into a ball and sob until he couldn’t feel the soreness in his throat anymore.

Part of him, an angry, jaded part of him, wanted to leave. Part of him wanted to stop caring. He wanted to go back in time and stop loving Yugi, stop getting close to him. A sliver of his heart ached and burned in anger and indignation and wanted nothing more than to separate himself from the subject of his affections if only it meant he would no longer be in the line of fire and so close to having one foot in the flames. He went through hard, heavy flashes where he hated Yugi and hated everything he put Jounouchi through; these were followed by tepid washes of guilt and cold tears that did nothing to relieve the pain. He was in constant conflict for a time, torn between self protection and the want, the _need_ to make sure his friend got out on the other side as well as he was able to.

But he stayed. Everything be damned, he stayed. No one had ever been there in the same way Yugi had been—not his family, not even Honda, it was _different_ and like hell he was gonna abandon the man just because he’d hit his lowest low and made a few fuckups along the way. The path to recovery was always lined with sabers and thorns and some of them pricked innocent bystanders and people who never should have been in harm’s way. He stayed through every fight, through every insult. He stayed through all the pain and the tears. He stayed, and he hated himself for it, but on the other side of that token was a him who was grateful he had the strength to see it through and ensure that the man he loved would eventually be okay.

Things got better.

It ached and it hurt. But they started to get better. And still Jounouchi was there, and he was so glad he had never left.

He wasn’t stupid. He knew abuse when he saw it. He’d lived through it in many forms. Neglect from his mother, physical and psychological from his father, sexual abuse in his past when he still ran with Hirutani and his gang. He knew what emotional abuse looked like and what it felt like. He would never have stayed if that was the whole of it. If Yugi had, in some unbelievable turn of events, outright abused and manipulated or used Jounouchi he would have been out faster than toilet paper at a shitty burger joint. But the fact of the matter remained that Yugi was in excruciating pain and was coping horribly and he had been two steps away from the edge of a very large precipice. And if the blonde had to take some pot shots to help protect his friend and slowly lead him away from that edge, so fucking be it. He was self-sacrificing to a fault and he knew it, but there was no way come the Gods or any other such nonsense they’d dealt with in the past that he was going to walk out on him now.

And yes, things did start to get better.

In time, he was able to see Yugi smile again. Not false smiles that hit his eyes and made them bright but never lasted. Not the kind that looked and felt sincere until he looked away. Real, true smiles that lifted him and everyone around him several notches. Some of his light returned. It was dimmer—some of his prior light had been Atem’s, and he was going to have to cultivate his own light and energy again and make it purely his own. It would never be the same, and that was for the better, because he could finally become his own man.

As his light continued to grow and his smiles became more effervescent, Yugi had been offered a job working for Kaiba Corporations on some secretive developmental team Kaiba was putting together. Yugi technically couldn’t talk to anyone about it, but Jounouchi hardly counted in his bubbling opinion and so he got the low down: Yugi was head of developing new tech and software, testing it, and bringing it to fruition. He wasn’t on the marketing side; he was in the thick of it, reporting directly to Kaiba Seto himself and working alongside him or Mokuba on several projects that were years-in-the-making levels of surreptitious and important to the company and the direction it was moving under Kaiba’s rule.

And there he absolutely blossomed.

The work was exactly what Yugi had needed to pull his feet the rest of the way from the murky mire of depression and self-hatred. Something just as intensive as dueling, just as taxing as saving the world several times over in many, many ways. It kept his mind incredibly busy, it kept him working 12 hour shifts and pulling doubles, it did for him what managing the game shop never had and what being King of Games could never dream of touching. And Yugi ate every bit of it up, soaking up the knowledge and the importance of his position like a dehydrated sponge and he grew and matured in rapid time, and all the while Jounouchi watched him and couldn’t help it:

He fell in love again and again and again. Because he truly saw Yugi for the first time and what he saw was nothing short of breathtaking.

Yugi was intense, even without Atem to harden his gaze and his demeanor. When left to his own devices he was laser focused and very commanding in a gentle sort of way that lended people to want to follow him. He was a natural leader, cultivating a charismatic atmosphere and a natural guiding presence that quickly became a necessity for Kaiba Corp in general and the team on which he worked especially. Their profit margin increased. Their productivity increased. Their quotas increased and they nailed them every single week without fail. He brought a team of like-minded people up and turned them into an intimidatingly powerful, well-oiled machine.

And Jounouchi saw every single nuance of his personality coming to life. He saw the way he leaned in toward whoever was speaking to him on days he visited to pick him up for lunch, the way he gave them rapt, unending and undivided attention. He saw the way he made everyone feel important even if he wasn’t allowed to see the bulk of the actual work going on behind closed doors and shuttered hallways. He saw the way people looked up to him, and the way Yugi would smile at them and quirk his head and half-close his eyes in a way that was utterly endearing and practically called people to fall in love with him.

He saw everything and it made his heart sing with love, affection, and adoration.

But he saw things that hurt him, too. Things that he should have been happy for and could not bring himself to be at first. Things that he had had no way of predicting, and yet should have seen coming from miles and miles away.

He saw the way Kaiba and Yugi worked together, each becoming closer. It was only natural. No one, not even Kaiba himself expected the young duelist to take such a natural light to the position. He had known the young man would be a valuable asset to his team, but not that he would quickly become utterly irreplaceable. But in seeing those things for the first time, the same things that Jounouchi was seeing for the thousandth time, Kaiba was being drawn in in ways he probably didn’t even see.

At least at first.

Jounouchi saw it though. Oh, he saw it.

He saw them together at his desk, Yugi standing and pointing over blueprints or sketches, a hip cocked against the corner and one hand placed firmly on the surface to support his weight while he explained, and Kaiba sitting in his high-backed leather chair nodding quietly, piercing eyes flickering between the papers and the man next to him with equal amounts of respect and interest. He saw them taking lunch in the cafeteria, both barely picking at their food, heavy in discussions that others wouldn’t have been able to follow or even understand, hands centimeters away from one another on the table top.

And all of that was just what Jounouchi personally was able to witness. Just the things he saw, as someone who didn’t work for the company and only hung around to pick his best friend up from work for lunch or to go home for the day so he wouldn’t have to walk. He got a few extra privileges; he and Yugi were so close it was only natural. But he couldn’t imagine what was blooming, blossoming behind closed doors where no one else could see them and they could fully steep in the aromatic tea of their developing and growing mutual attraction.

In the end, it was to anything but his surprise when a good, long time later the pair announced their involvement to close friends and close friends alone. Kaiba hadn’t been happy about it, but at Yugi’s gentle insistence he begrudgingly admitted that he didn’t mind the nerd herd knowing. They were close to Yugi, he said, and therefore he could at least tolerate them. Everyone had chuckled while Yugi had affectionately rolled his eyes. Jounouchi had chuckled too, a genuine laugh that turned his expression into a smile and made his insides writhe.

He would never be anything but happy for the two. He felt that at his core and also made it a personal vow. He would only ever be happy and supportive toward them, cheering them on from the sidelines and carefully watching their every move in case one of them needed a safe place to fall and be lifted up from. He wanted nothing but good things for Yugi. He wanted to see him happy and smiling, see him living and breathing on his own, see him becoming his own man. 

If that meant leaving Jounouchi behind, he could be okay with that. He _would_ be okay with that.

He wanted to see him thrive.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey all and thanks so much for reading!! So uhhhh okay. So sometimes I do this thing where I'll go through my old work and rewrite it but that tends to get me stuck in ruts where I keep redoing the same concepts so this time I got that urge but wanted to still grow?? If that makes sense? So instead of the shit I used to do (which I won't blather about it's not interesting believe me lol) I decided to look through things I'd written that weren't for fandom at all and seeing what inspiration I could garner from those, basically. Wowee I am not making sense it's 6:14 AM anyways, a couple days ago I was a good bit into this piece and was like neat! This will prolly be about 900 words give or take which is around my average for flash pieces and vignettes! I'm totally okay with that! And uhh then I wrote 2000 words tonight out of fucking nowhere. SO HEY LMAO.
> 
> Anyways thank y'all SO much for all the kudos, comments, bookmarks, and everything else!!! It really helps keep me going mentally and helps me stay kind of alive in the writing sense. I am hardly coherent good god. Anyway if you'd like to help support a disabled autistic writer please consider donating to my Ko-Fi! I could really use the help because things have gotten really hectic in my personal life and this could help ensure I have food to eat every day which is a big deal lol. <3 Love you all, and see you next time!!


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